I've started playing live poker and I'm miserable even after winning sessions. I realize it's going to take an enormous amount of time to move up, and I just don't have it in me anymore to put in 50+ hour weeks. I can't get enough volume in online anymore. What kept me going online for so long was the challenge. In live there's no challenge at low stakes it's just waiting for hands and value betting.

I still like poker, but not obsessively like before where I can put in the work necessary to move up. The major demotivating factor is that the games are dying. It's close to impossible to play for a living on usa sites, and even in vegas you have to follow the 5/10 games when they run. I would have to kill myself putting in volume the next several years to work my way up only to a point where the games are already dying at 5/10. Plus I'm not even happy doing it. That effort would be better used going to school and getting a job doing something that makes me happy. It's infinitely easier to make 50k with a bachelor's degree than it is playing poker now. Plus I can still play poker and my hours pokering might not even be that much less while going to school than they are the past few weeks.

I don't think I was ever happy playing poker. I am extremely competitive, and poker was nice to do by default since I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I could play poker forever until a week ago when I had to sit back and actually be honest with my happiness level the past several years. Even when my hourly was highest at dons on stars I was the same happiness level that I was a couple months ago playing micro cash with a significantly lower hourly.

I'm trying to pick out something I want to do before next semester starts. I want to pick something I like, has job security, I can stay in vegas for, and where I can make 24k a year after taxes. I'm asian \(^_^)/ so everyone immediately tells me to do something with computers or finance, but I don't enjoy computers or following the stock market anymore. I do enjoy english and that was the only subject I excelled at in school. I would go for something english related, but my friend went to wmu for journalism. He lives in a big city now, but he can't get a job related to his degree. He said if he had to do it all over again he'd go into something computer related, and I definitely shouldn't go into journalism. So I'm trying to pick out something now.

Someone mentioned this career aptitude testing place to me:

http://www.jocrf.org/about_aptitudes/scheduling.html

It's $675. I'm reading reviews of it. The testing seems very good, but at the end they still just give you general career recommendations like journalism, teaching, or consulting which is a huge turnoff. If anyone knows anyone that went here let me know what they thought about it, or if anyone was in a similar spot and ended up finding a good job I'd be interested to hear about it.

I'm an nba fish trying to understand what's going on and why everyone hates the princeton offense cause it seems sexy to me. Do nba players hate it because of the 24 second shot clock? Do above average nba players want to have more freedom? Is it the right move for mike brown to be fired so soon? Lakers are ranked 24th in defense right now. Is that brown's fault?

Or do you lose out on too much info?

My sole source of income is poker and I would like to play 4-6 hours a day. I'm going to pick a schedule and follow it for at least 30 days. I'm going to give myself some reward at least daily for following it. I haven't decided on the reward yet.

Gonna start this tomorrow. Hopefully it goes well.

7 alarm
8 jog/basketball
9-10 bfast. watch a poker video while bfasting
11-12 poker
12-1230 snack + poker video
1230-130 poker
130 - 400 lunch/read/nap
400-600 poker
600-630 snack + poker video
630-800 poker
800-12 dinner + whatever
12-7 sleep

<edit> Think I have the reward. Fast food + candy bar daily. I'm going to be going to mostly subway anyways. Candy bar isn't so good but doing it with subway is going to def be enough to keep me on track.

There's some good youtube videos out there for shooting form, but I haven't really seen anything for getting your release higher. I feel like my form goes to shit whenever I try to release higher and I'm not consistent at all. I really like the way kobe shoots and I think that'd be the best form to copy. If I could copy anyone it would be iverson just because he can get his shot off really well off the dribble and in traffic, but it's impossible for me to copy. Anyone have any tips?

I'm guessing std dev is around 125 for most people? What's the equivalent to having 100bi for 6-max at hu? What's the equivalent of move up with 30bi move down with 25bi at 6-max for hu if you want to kelly criterion?

I had to cashout so I had to look at results. It's been about 20,300 hands since I last looked. I think I had about 2500 when I started and had 2700 when I last looked. I thought it was very possible I could be at 2300 right now. I was gonna be pretty happy as long as it around 2500. I didn't look at hm/pt or ptr so I have no idea what my allin-ev looks like right now. I could be even or losing in allin-ev for all I know.

Part of it's rb, part of it's me sucking out on people pretty bad a couple weekends ago in questionable spots where I decided to call, and part of it is that I ran like the sun today and got AA more times than I thought was possible in my last 1k hand session.

I'm going to play as long as possible without looking at results between now and my next cashout. Starting a few sessions ago I could already tell it made a gigantic difference in the way I'm able to analyze hands I'm in during a session as well as thinking about them after a session. I always used to have a problem estimating frequencies of stuff like 3-bets and check raises which I'm having an easier time with now too.

It's incredibly liberating playing without results. There were so many times before where I would drop 3-6 buyins and figured I had to be making mistakes. The opposite was true as well. I would like to think it didn't affect my play and decision making, but I'm positive it did even if just a little bit.

I'm hoping I can go a month without having to look again.

Diablo 3 open beta this weekend. There goes my volume.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963...4_19_2012#blog

Weekend Play: C
Weekend Luck: C

Monday Play: B
Monday Luck: A

I'm gonna rate my play and how lucky I thought I ran so I can look back on it after and see how it matched up with results. Think I'm getting used to 6-max already. Bluffing frequencies and tendencies and value betting lines and sizes are a bit different than fr. I'm just making a note in the blog so I can check to see how results line up whenever I look.

I ran insanely hot coolering people today when the money went in. I got the money in bad a few times in questionable spots over the weekend. Maybe I ran bad getting into those spots and I still think not folding could have been ok, but I won't have a better idea until I play more. I haven't had KK into AA once so far so I'm probably running pretty hot with stuff like that. I have no idea how I'm doing results wise so far, but I'm pretty happy with how I'm playing and I'm still learning a lot. It's so relaxing being able to play without being aware of results. I'm not sure why I couldn't do this before. Maybe I'm getting better as I get older?

I miss fr because I feel at home there and it helps so much for playing live, but man it's so nice being able to grind at 2am and being able to max out on tables at 6-max.

I originally planned to not look at results until at least 20k hands, but after throwing some numbers into this variance simulator I think I need way more hands than I thought:



Even if I'm crushing 10nl the variance is gonna be insane, and if I were to guess I think my winrate right now is 2ptbb since I'm getting used to 6-max and playing with keyboard shortcuts instead of so many mouse clicks.

So how long should I not look for? Do I just not look forever since if I win at only 2-3ptbb even over 150k hands since it's so easy just to run good or bad?

I'm pretty sure looking at the results would do more harm than good just based on how massive the variance can be. If I'm crushing I review less. If I'm breaking even or losing I review more, but honestly who plays their A game when they're losing? Maybe I'll just have my roommate check ptr every couple weeks and tell me when I have 100bi to move up to the next level while I grind away in blissful ignorance.

Oh and man am I going through stars withdrawals. The software on merge is the best non-stars software I've played on, but it's still horrible. I miss being able to play without having to worry about tables glitching out or not popping up.